Second Drowning
This was not like the time before when I almost drowned
when the water lay above like a thick ceiling I could not reach.
Then I saw the sunlight diffuse though the water
leaning back in that golden acceptance, I closed my eyes.
This time it was like a Japanese painting.
The anesthesiologist said, count to three
I was only a plum branch sketch on canvas
white disappearing into white.
The problem was only mechanical I told my mother
through a phone in her nursing home room
a valve in the heart that needed repair
I’d tell you to come home, she said, but I don’t have one.
This time it was whiteness. No gold water calling.
“Our Father” my mother said, as she fingered the beads,
her prayers traveling in a circle. We knelt on the floor.
Our fingers circulating again through the old design.
*
Michael Northen is the founder and past editor of Wordgathering (2070-2019). He was co-editor of two previous anthologies of disability writing Beauty is a Verb (2011) and The Right Way to Be Crippled and Naked (2011) both from Cinco Puntos.
